News Flashes

Revelation Software will showcase the next major release of OpenInsight at its 2015 users conference in Houston, Texas, March 24-27. RevCon15 will take place at the Omni Houston Hotel, which is centrally located in the Uptown Post Oak/Galleria area.

Kore Technologies will be one of the featured vendors at Encounter, the annual Eclipse Users Group Conference, taking place September 17-19 in Atlanta. Mark Dobransky, co-founder and managing partner of Kore, will present a session titled "Integration and Data Warehousing with Eclipse" on Friday, September 19, at 2 pm. The presentation will include a live demonstration of Kourier Integrator's data warehousing capabilities.

North Iowa Area Community College (NIACC) is deploying Entrinsik Informer as its new reporting solution to allow end users to create and run their own reports, and leverage dashboard creation and data analysis capabilities. In evaluating new solutions, NIACC sought to implement a reporting solution that could be set up to easily answer questions as they arise; and provide the ability to join tables and views in the background giving the end user access to more data with less reliance on technology services.

Data representations such as JSON and XML have the ability to extend well beyond the three dimensions supported by the MultiValue data model. Processing this data efficiently can present challenges when needing to parse or update large multi-dimensional data items, according to Pick Cloud and Ladybridge Systems, which will jointly present a webinar that introduces the concept of data collections that use extensions to the familiar MultiValue environment to store and manipulate arbitrarily multi-dimensional data.

With the opportunities and obstacles presented by developments such as big data, cloud, and mobility, the challenges of managing and extracting value from data have never been greater. At the same time, the array of technology options for storing, protecting, integrating, enhancing and analyzing data has exploded. To help add perspective and acknowledge the products and services that have been deemed to provide unique value to customers, DBTA created this new competition. Here are the winners of the 2014 DBTA Readers' Choice Awards.

The deluge of big data available for analysis presents great opportunity, but many organizations are having difficulty managing it. This has led to companies not being able to process valuable data, or having to delete sets of data to clear room for the massive amounts of new data.

Idera, a provider of application and server management solutions, has updated its SQL Compliance Manager, SQL Diagnostic Manager and SQL Safe Backup products with features that improve ease of use, efficiency and performance for database administrators. Idera has also added new support for Microsoft Hyper-V in SQL Diagnostic Manager so that customers can monitor the performance of physical and virtual server environment across both VMware and Microsoft.

China Telecom Corporation Limited and IBM have entered into a 3-year agreement to help small and medium businesses implement SAP cloud-based applications. The announcement is a key step in the Chinese cloud computing market that will provide one of the fastest growing segments within China greater access to cloud resources, said D.C. Chien, general manager and chief executive officer, IBM Greater China Group.

SAP SE has introduced a secure enterprise app store that allows companies to push their mobile apps into the hands of employees, business partners and consumers. The Mobile Place feature delivers apps, services and content to both managed and unmanaged mobile devices. The new Mobile Place feature is included at no additional cost with the purchase of SAP Mobile Secure portfolio.

With the game-changing potential of big data, data governance continues to grow in importance. To better understand the impact of new data sources on data governance practices, IBM commissioned Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., to survey IT and business stakeholders at organizations across North America. The survey report has just been released and is now available.

During its annual user conference in San Francisco, Couchbase launched the beta release of Couchbase Server 3.0. As part of the beta release, Couchbase is also announcing a contest - the Couchbase Server 3.0 Bug Bash.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to transform how and when decisions are made throughout business and our daily lives, but only if that data can be processed and analyzed effectively. Join DBTA for a special webcast featuring Robert Geiger, vice president, Products, at TransLattice; Michael Hummel, CTO of ParStream; and Hannah Smalltree, director of Treasure Data, to learn about the key technologies and practices shaping the future. This webcast takes place August 26 at 2 pm ET/ 11 am PT.

To help companies evaluate big data systems, a new benchmark has been launched by the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). TPCx-HS is a major achievement for two reasons, noted Raghunath Nambiar, chairman of the TPCx-HS committee, and a distinguished engineer at Cisco. It is the first vendor-neutral benchmark focused on big data systems - which have become a critical part of the enterprise IT ecosystem. TPCx-HS is also the first Express-class benchmark issued by the TPC.

Violin Memory, a provider of all-flash storage arrays and appliances delivering application solutions for the enterprise, has introduced data deduplication and compression capabilities in its Concerto 2200 solution. According to Violin Memory, the new Concerto 2200 array update with inline deduplication and compression gives customers maximum storage efficiency, with deduplication rates commonly between 6:1 and 10:1.

Expanding its ecosystem, NoSQL database provider Couchbase has formalized its partnershhips with Cloudsoft, Cumulogic and Elasticbox. This particular announcement is focused on orchestration vendors - companies that provide database as a service technology that other companies can use to develop their own database as a service for internal requirements, said Bob Wiederhold, CEO of Couchbase.

At the summer 2014 SHARE conference in Pittsburgh, Brian Peterson, who has been president of SHARE for the past two years, spoke about the challenges facing companies today as they deal with emerging IT requirements and the successful approaches for dealing with the mainframe skills shortage. With SHARE's 60th anniversary coming up, Peterson also reflected on the role SHARE has played in the world economy by supporting technology that is critical to industries such as banking, transportation, and manufacturing.

Version 6.2 of zOSEM (zOperating System Environment Manager) from Trident Services provides three major capabilities, including ISV and MLC cost reduction through software isolation; labor cost and risk reduction through the automation of z/OS installation exits; and, hardware and software cost reduction through reporting on and optimizing DFSMShsm activity.

A new software platform and supporting services from GT Software enables users to access critical information from across the organization, regardless of where the data resides, on or off the mainframe. GT Software's Data Unification Solution includes Ivory Data Hub v5.3, which provides SQL support for all data types, both on and off the mainframe, including VSAM, DB2, Oracle, and SQL Server.

IBM and CSC, a technology services provider, are offering a set of cloud solutions, app development and infrastructure management, and a Center of Excellence (CoE) offering, integration with IBM's SoftLayer, and consulting services.

Oracle has released Oracle Linux 7, which provides support for emerging technologies, such as OpenStack, as well as new Linux innovations, tools, and features. "With Oracle Linux 7, users have more freedom to choose the technologies and solutions that best meet their business objectives," said Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president of Linux and Virtualization Engineering, Oracle.

Oracle's Exadata Database Machine X4-8 has been enhanced to provide large performance and memory increases compared to the previous generation. Hardware enhancements include 50% more database compute cores, using the Intel Xeon E7 v2 15-core processors, and up to 6TB of memory per compute node for a total of 12TB per rack. The result, says Oracle, is that the Exadata Database Machine X4-8 can consolidate hundreds of databases and can run massive databases entirely in-memory.

The Oracle Exastack program is being extended to include the Oracle Big Data Appliance and Oracle Database Appliance, enabling Oracle partners to demonstrate that they have the right infrastructure to manage challenging data environments.

Oracle recently revealed that NCR, VRSG, Sascar, UL, and Asiana Airlines are among the latest customers using Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. To date, says Oracle, hundreds of customers across 52 countries and 21 industries have adopted Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud to help reduce the cost and complexity of deploying, consolidating and virtualizing their enterprise applications, and a record number of partners have also adopted Exalogic.

The latest release of Oracle Database 12c - 12.1.0.2 - is generally available, and includes the new Database In-Memory technology, an option designed to support faster business decisions by accelerating the performance of Oracle Database applications. According to Andrew Mendelsohn, executive vice president, Oracle Database Server Technologies, the new in-memory option enables customers to gain the competitive advantage of the real-time enterprise "with the flip of a switch."

A new, free extension to the Splunk software platform for operational intelligence enables the capture of real-time streaming wire data for additional insights when using Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud for security, fraud detection, compliance, application management, IT operations and business analytics.

At the HP Vertica Big Data Conference in Boston, Logi Analytics announced a new partnership with Vertica. With the introduction of Logi Vision for HP Vertica, Vertica is now integrated with the complete suite of Logi Analytics solutions, including Logi's business information platform, Logi Info. This enables Logi Analytics and HP Vertica customers to address a broad range of use cases - including data discovery, dashboards and reports, and embedding analytics into operational business applications.

Splice Machine, a provider of a Hadoop RDBMS, has added a $3 million extension to its Series B financing provided by venture capital firm Correlation Ventures, along with database industry leaders Roger J. Sippl and Roger Bamford. The new funding adds to the initial $15 million Series B investment from Interwest Partners and Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV), bringing the total round to $18 million.

VoltDB, provider of an in-memory NewSQL database, is now participating in the IBM Cloud Marketplace, which combines IBM's capabilities-as-a-service and those of partners and third-party vendors. The vendors say that, according to a recent benchmark, VoltDB running in the SoftLayer cloud delivers faster application performance than Amazon Web Services.

The OAUG has created a Young Professionals Forum to give younger OAUG members a chance to network, interact and candidly discuss challenges and solutions as they relate to the use of Oracle Applications and the workplace in general as well as learn from guest speakers and mentors. The forum will hold a conference call on Wednesday, Aug. 13, at 3 pm ET for a discussion on big data led by Sean Donaldson, CTO of Secure-24.

A new integration service from Jitterbit is aimed at SAP customers who find difficulty with integration of their existing solutions to be the biggest obstacle to incorporating new cloud technologies. The new Jitterbit Harmony SAP Connector helps organizations streamline crucial business processes with SAP integration between SAP ECC, CRM, vertical applications, and more than a thousand enterprise endpoints, ranging from legacy on-premise software to new cloud-based solutions.

Just months after the massive data breaches of the 2013 holiday season, a newly discovered data breach is again shining a spotlight on the need for better enterprise data security and the fact that not enough is being done to secure critical customer data. The most recent headlines involve a Russian crime ring and 1.2 billion user names and passwords as well as at least 500 million email addresses. Against this backdrop, Oracle announced Oracle Key Vault, a software appliance designed to securely manage encryption keys and credential files in the enterprise data center.

Splunk, a provider of operational intelligence software, has announced a 100% uptime service level agreement (SLA) for Splunk Cloud, along with new lower prices and cloud service plans. Splunk Cloud is a SaaS platform, offering Splunk Enterprise as a cloud service.

Caspio has released Caspio HIPAA Enterprise, a HIPAA-compliant edition of its rapid application development platform. With Caspio HIPAA Enterprise, the company aims to support the healthcare industry in leveraging cloud-based applications to improve efficiencies and streamline processes in practice management, patient engagement, and health information management within a secure and compliant environment.

Actian has started the Big Data 2.0 Clear Path Program to help companies jumpstart analytics projects and move existing ones into production more rapidly. Developed by data scientists in Actian's Analytics Center of Excellence (COE), the Big Data 2.0 Clear Path Program applies big data concepts for faster time to value, higher accuracy and deeper discovery, leveraging the Actian Analytics Platform.

X15 Enterprise, which provides an end-to-end solution for ingesting, indexing, searching and analyzing machine data, is now generally available from X15 Software. According to the vendor, X15 Enterprise allows machine data to remain in HDFS and does not require it to be duplicated into proprietary storage before it can be indexed and analyzed.

IBM has acquired CrossIdeas, a privately held provider of security software that governs user access to applications and data across on-premise and cloud environments. Based in Rome, Italy, CrossIdeas addresses the business requirements of auditors and risk and compliance managers withrole analytics, visualizations for better insight into user access, and alignment with compliance and access risk requirements. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Scientists from IBM, AT&T, and Applied Communication Sciences (ACS) have announced a proof-of-concept for technology that reduces set-up times for cloud-to-cloud connectivity from days to seconds."This technology not only represents a new ability to scale big data workloads and cloud computing resources in a single environment but the elastic bandwidth model removes the inefficiency in consumption versus cost for cloud-to-cloud connectivity," said Douglas Freimuth, IBM Research senior technical staff member and master inventor.

Data backup solutions provider STORServer has released a new guide to the backup appliance selection process. The guide offers insight on hardware and software considerations, key features, and manufacturer support criteria.

GigaSpaces Technologies has re-architected its Cloudify offering to simplify the application deployment, management and scaling experience on OpenStack, VMware vSphere and other clouds and environments. Cloudify 3.0 eliminates the boundaries between orchestration and monitoring, providing a mechanism that automatically reacts to monitored events with corrective measures.

Novetta Identity Analytics has achieved Hortonworks Certification, and Novetta has joined the Hortonworks Technology Partner Program. Novetta Identity Analytics provides a central, multi-dimensional view of the entities across the data silos and uncovers the relationships within and among those entities to support customer intimacy, churn prediction, risk profiling, fraud analysis and detection, and other use cases.

Data protection and recovery software provider Arcserve has begun operations as a standalone company following the completion of the sale of the business from CA to investment firm Marlin Equity Partners.

MuleSoft, an integration broker vendor, is offering new solutions for connecting Microsoft technologies within the cloud-enabled enterprise. MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform is designed to enable companies to leverage existing Microsoft IT investments and integration logic written in .NET. Microsoft customers can now address immediate integration challenges and develop a cloud and API management strategy for the future.

Corvil, an IT data analytics company, has introduced Corvil Giga, a new streaming analytics platform for real-time operational intelligence and big data integration. The release is targeted at companies in the financial industry and others that need to operate their business in real time.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, has formed a new partnership with MapR Technologies. The two companies are developing turn-key solutions to address big data challenges.